New Computer, Two monitors, Windows Vista

Over the years, Jim and I have been involved in the purchase of several hundred personal computers. Some for clients, some for ourselves and lots for our Training Center classrooms. We have a real good feel for when a computer should be replaced. In our experience, after 2 years of use, a computer will be getting sluggish and have developed some problems. At that point, you should clean it off (reformat it) and re-set it up. It will feel like a brand new computer for a while. A 3-year old computer is geting old. If anything goes wrong, it's not worth putting much time or money into that computer. If you're good at maintaining your computer and keep it going to 4 years old - you're doing really good. But, at 4 years you really do need a new one. Technology has changed to the extent that your 4-year old computer is just not the same machine as the new ones. And, besides they cost a lot less now than when you bought yours!

We think that every year of a computer's life is akin to 4 years in a car. A 3 year old computer is like a 12 year old car. We've been asked to work on 7 year-old computers and make them work on a Wi-Fi network. Sorry, it's not worth our time. That's like asking a 28 year old car to match the features of today's cars. Not to mention that the computer 'highway' has changed significantly.

All this is leading up to justifying the fact that I just bought a new computer to replace my nearly 4yr old one, even though I had to dig deep into savings to do it! :-)

I bought a Toshiba Satellite notebook computer, model #A135 S4487 for $1500 at Best Buy. It has 2 gigabytes of RAM, the Intel Core2 Duo processor, 2 hard drives totaling 200 gigabytes, a writeable CD/DVD drive, it weighs 6 pounds and comes with Windows Vista. I thought I was going to get a Sony Vaio, since Jim has liked his so much, but both Jim and I really liked the fact that this one had 2 hard drives - and Toshiba has always been a good name in laptops also.

It was Jim's computer for the first couple days because I wanted him to do all the upgrades, security, and installing/configuring all my software.



It was his idea to keep my old monitor on my desk, set the laptop beside it, and configure the computer to use *both* monitors at the same time! I thought that was a little excessive, but now that I'm getting used to it, I *Love* it! Instead of switching back and forth between 2 windows - you drag one of those windows to the other monitor. When I drag my mouse to the edge of one screen, it continues on the other one! It is so cool. I've seen other people with setups like this, but I never thought I'd have it. And, I'm still using my same wireless keyboard and mouse on the keyboard drawer - so I haven't lost any of the comfort of my workstation due to the laptop.



So, what are we doing with my old, desktop, computer? Jim hooked it up to our projector and the big screen! The Geeks just keep getting Geekier!